Archive of Our Own ^beta

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Dutch blinked his eyes open. He looked around his room -was it his room? It didn’t feel like it- and curled in on himself even more. Something was wrong. Something didn’t feel right. He kept trying to stabilize his breathing. ‘In and out’ he kept telling himself. But his efforts of calming himself down didn’t seem to be working, as his breathing only quickened and the tears started pouring down again soon after.

Was he dreaming? It didn't feel like it, but everything around him seemed fake . Like it wasn’t really there. Like it wasn’t real . Like this was all just some kind of sick dream he would wake up from any moment now and things would just go back to normal.

Dutch envies the idea of being normal.

Before, it would never have appealed to him. He always liked the idea of being “weird” before. Of being above all of the social standards and rules that people associated with normalcy. Of being above consequences. Of being above everyone else. Of being above God himself . 

But now, as he looks around his distorted and warped room he realizes the truth. He’s not above god. He’s not above consequences. He was never above anything. Instead, he’s just tumbling down a hill. A hill full of confusing memories, warped realities, and people who never even existed.

Dutch is certain that “normal” people don’t deal with stuff like this. God, he wishes he could just be normal. He tries to stabilize his breathing again before giving up and giving in to the sobs that wreck his body. Giving in to the realization that he’s not okay.

He wants someone to find him like this. To comfort him. To tell him that he’s okay. That what he’s feeling is normal . But he doubts that will happen. He can barely even connect names to faces in his warped mind. He can’t remember the last person he spoke to. He can’t remember if they were even real .

So Dutch just just curls up alone in a room that doesn’t feel real. In a world that nobody lives in.